Quickly about VAT. The situation with cash settlements is the insurer does not need to pay the VAT component until you have been presented with a VAT invoice. (Because you haven't "lost" that money until you have been invoiced.) So what you should agree with the insurer is either to pay you the VAT up front, or else they will pay you the VAT on your contractor's invoice with 7 days of you presenting the invoice to the insurer. My claim is going OK. In fact, I think it will get resolved today. The thing that ultimately got the claim moving forwards was me taking legal action against AXA. This got their solicitors involved, and I had to keep on ratcheting up the pressure with their solicitors to get an outcome that was fair. We've agreed on a settlement figure now, and they sent through the documentation yesterday when I was out all day. I'm going to check it through today and hopefully sign it off. The financial settlement we've agreed is just under 9 times higher than they first offered!

Thanks - this is very helpful. I am not sure how to use the legal system to get them to act in a reasonable timeframe though. I am sure once they have agreed on the quantum for a loss they'll pay it quite quickly, but what can you issue an action for if the amount of the loss is not agreed?

Although it's a hypothetical question, it is based on a real situation. Clearly it is in the interest of the insurer to handle things slowly... the longer they take to pay out, the more likely it is the insured will accept a partial settlement, and the longer they can invest the capital for. So is there any obligation in law for them to handle things reasonably? What's to stop an insurer taking 6 months to resolve a claim when it would be possible to resolve it in 1 month? I'm not saying 6 months would be unprofessional, it would just be far slower than is necessary.

I agree that putting timescales in would be a nightmare. But for example, if you had a car crash, what if they said the first time someone could look at the car was 30 days? Or 60 days? Is there anything you can do to ask them to look at it more quickly?

I've got a general question on insurance that I was wondering if someone could help with. When an insured loss happens, the insurer is responsible for "putting it right". If it is at their discretion whether they either repair it or cash settle, and there is nothing in terms of timescales in the contract, why do they ever have to settle it? Why can't they simply keep bouncing correspondence to and fro for years before paying out?

How would the insurer's go about 'evidencing' the repairs are likely to be suitable? And how would I go about the opposite? Essentially there are two surveyors with two different opinions. My builder shares the same opinion as my surveyor.

Unclebulgaria, your suggested action of just 'going with the flow' is certainly the easiest option. However, this puts me in a potentially worse position than I should be. If we discover in 7 years time that things have deteriorated as a result of doing the patch repair, if we 'go with the flow' then we have no easy recourse against them because of the Limitation Act. What I don't want to do is go with the flow and suffer in the future as a result of this - I'm trying to protect myself against this.

I've got an insurance claim that's been going on since November and it has come to a bit of a head. Quite a high spec kitchen, I'm told £50k+ by the previous owner who had it done in 2004. Escape of water which led to lots of the units soaking up moisture into them. About 1/3rd of the kitchen is solid pine, the rest MDF. The insurer appointed a surveyor who said that the damp sections could be cut out and replaced by a joiner. I instructed my own surveyor who said that when water gets into MDF you need to replace the item, not do a 'patch repair'. The loss adjuster is Crawford's. Their position is to do the patch repair, my position is the full repair. I've offered them one of two positions: 1) Do the full repair as per my surveyor's suggestion 2) Do the patch repair as per their surveyor, but they give me a guarantee in case the repair is not sufficient. (E.G. If in 3, 5, 10 years time it becomes apparent my surveyor was right.) The position they're taking (unsurprisingly) is that they only want to do the cheap repair, and have no liability if it turns out they should have done the full repair. Can anyone offer any advice over how to handle this?

Thanks everyone for all their help, just wanted to come back to give a quick update. The Crawford & Co adjuster came around on Friday. Bit of a flying visit to be honest, and the conclusion he reached was he needed to pass it on to a local office, as it was above his £25k delegated authority. So it's now over 11 weeks and AXA haven't got me a settlement figure or agreed a start date for their builder...

All interesting comments, loss adjustor is coming this Friday so not long until I get an idea of how they're going to behave!

Well, I've sent a Data Protection Act SAR (Subject Access Request) to Crawford, AXA, their builder and their surveyor, so it will be interesting to see what information they come back. I think they do have a duty to disclose the quotations under this, but I am not 100% sure. Regarding any settlement, I will only make it on the basis that it is not final, and I can come back for more if during the course of the works it is found further damage has occurred, or else there is further damage that isn't apparent now that becomes apparent in the future.

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I will update further when things have moved to the next stage.

Thanks for the advice, I'm going to give the insurance company a timescale on which I'll appoint my own loss adjuster then. However, one thing you mentioned I don't quite understand - why does it cost the insurance company more when the claim goes on longer?

I've already appointed my own surveyor - I'm not quite sure what a loss adjuster would do that my surveyor hasn't already done? The only outcome I can see of me appointing a loss adjuster is they produce a figure which is different to that the insurance company produces, and we then have an argument about it. This is pretty much the same situation as we are in at the moment, where the argument is going to be about my surveyor's schedule of works versus the insurance co's own. Have I missed something about what a loss adjuster does?

Firstly, thanks everyone for their replies! I've quoted the two replies as they neatly summarise where I've got to with my thinking. It's good that they've got their loss adjuster instructed, but based on experience so far with their "independent" experts, I'm not expecting the loss adjuster to handle the claim fairly. Assuming the adjuster doesn't come back with the same schedule of works my independent surveyor (who incidentally inspected the kitchen 18 months ago as part of a full home buying survey), then it will be a negotiation with AXA. Everything they have done so far has taken lots of time and served to frustrate a quick settlement, so I would assume that any further negotiation will add considerable time to the matter. What I'm trying to achieve is to get my kitchen back to the state it was pre-incident, as quickly as possible. It seems AXA is offering "quick, but not fully restored" or "fully restored, but not quick". I don't see what option I have to put pressure on AXA to speed things up, apart from court action. I've already put in a complaint to the FSA about the timescales AXA have taken to handle the claim.